: 302 

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Reprinted from the 

LDUCATIONAL REVIEW 

April, 1913 

Copytisbt. 1913, by Eddcationai. Review Pubushing Co., New York 



ALLXANDLR HAMILTON 

Stenographic report of an address delivered at the Hamilton Club of 

Brooklyn, N. Y., January u, 191 3. Printed by the 

courtesy of the Brooklyn Eagle. 



BY 



NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLLR 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON' 

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen : You have summoned 
me to a grateful and an honorable task. To a lover of Hamil- 
ton nothing could be more pleasing than to be asked to 
speak of him on the anniversary of his birth, to a company 
of gentlemen assembled in a club which bears his name, in 
the borough on whose soil he received his baptism, of fire in 
the War of Independence, and now part of a city so devoted 
to his personality and his political opinions that it was 
called by his enemies Hamiltonopolis. But it is not pos- 
sible for me to say anything new about Alexander Hamilton. 
Every American who knows his country's history, every 
American who has penetrated beneath the surface of our 
political life to an understanding of its making and its 
fundamental jirinciples, knows full well that Alexander 
Hamilton has joined the company of the immortals. 

You need not expect from me a severely critical estimate 
of the man, of his service to our American life, or of his 
place in history. I love him too well. I am too much under 
the spell of his personality, of his eloquence, and too pro- 
found and convinced a believer in the doctrines of liberty 
and of government that he taught and made to live in 
institutions on this soil, to speak of him in words of cautious 
and hesitant criticism. You will have to accept from me 
the reflections of a convinced believer in Hamilton as the 
one supremely great intellect yet produced in the western 
world; as the only man whose writings on political theory 
and political science bear comparison with the classic work 
on politics by the philosopher Aristotle. I am prepared to 
defend the thesis that the two great epoch-making works 
in the whole literature of political science are, for the an- 

' Stenographic report of an address delivered at the Hamilton Club of 
Brooklyn, \. Y., January 1 1, 1913. Printed by the courtesy of the Brooklvn 
Eat,k. 



cient world, the Politics of Aristotle, and, for the modern 
world, those contributions known as The Federalist and the 
various letters and speeches which taken together represent 
Hamilton's exposition of the American Constitution and 
the American form of government. 

There is nothing that I can say about Hamilton which 
will be novel to members of a club that bears his name. 
Yet after the passage of all these years, what a splendid 
memory that personality suggests, what a romance ■ that 
life was, what a revelation of human power and of human 
service his contributions to mankind and to the progress of 
civilization ! 

I like to think of the strands that entered into the 
making of that personality and that character. There was 
the high-purposed, rugged determination of the Scot, 
together with the almost fanatical devotion and enthusiasm 
of the Huguenot; these strands not meeting and inter- 
twining under ordinary circumstances or under a gray and 
unfriendly sky, but luider the bright sun of the West 
Indies on a little point of rich volcanic land, representing, 
perhaps, the ambition of mother earth to thrust herself up 
thru the blue waters of the tropical ocean in order to make 
a fit birthplace for a political genius. I like to think of the 
youthful beginnings of his boyish life, of the admiration of 
his mother for her brilliant child, who, in infancy, had the 
maturity of an experienced philosopher; a boy who, at nine, 
was writing letters worthy of a sage, and at thirteen was 
managing an important business for a distant client in the 
province of New York. I like to remember that when that 
dying mother felt the hand of death upon her at the early 
age of thirty- two, she summoned the little boy to her bed- 
side and said to him: "My son, never aim at the second 
best. It is not worthy of you. Your powers are in har- 
mony with the everlasting principles of the imiverse.' 
Was ever a child, an orphan child, sent out from an island 
home to seek his fortune in a new and strange and troubled 
land wilh higher prophecy or with more beneficent bene- 
diction? 

Gin 

Author 
FEB 10 (1)4 



And then the boy crosses the sea to the province of New 
York. He casts about for an opportunity of obtaining an 
education. He is thirsting for information. He had read 
a few great books, books far beyond the capacity of an ordi- 
nary boy of his age. He was seeking direction, instruction, 
opportunity, and he presented himself to President With- 
erspoon of Princeton College. He said that he wanted to 
become a student there; that he had no time to devote four 
years to the very moderate course of instruction of that day, 
but that if he were allowed to pursue the course in less time 
and to complete it earlier he would be glad to enter his 
name. The president told him — after the fashion of college 
presidents —that there were rules that could not be broken 
and that his proposal was impossible. Did the boy enter 
himself at Princeton for four years? Not in the least. He 
moved on to New York and appeared before Myles Cooper, 
the scholarly Tory who was president of King's College, and 
made the same proposal to him. Myles Cooper, trained at 
Oxford and more a man of the world, said that it could be 
arranged; and it was. So x\lexander Hamilton became a 
pupil in King's College over yonder, on the King's farm, 
just beyond where Trinity Church now stands and not far 
from the churchyard vvhere his ashes lie. 

It was well that he did so, because within a year the angry 
mob of New York rebels, stirred to anger by the actions of 
the British Government and by reports from across the sea, 
as well as by the Tory president's pamphlets in defense of 
British policy, appeared at the college doors and demanded 
the punishment of President Myles Cooper. This stripling 
of eighteen stood on the college steps and held them at bay 
with his eloquence while the president of the college escaped 
by the rear gate, and was taken off by a boat to a British 
ship lying in the Hudson. If Alexander Hamilton had 
gone to Princeton, Myles Cooper would have been lynched. 

And then I like to think of him at that early age, a boy, 
a mere child, putting down in the notebooks which have 
been preserved for us, the list of things he was interested in 
and the books that he read. In them you come upon this 



item: 'Read particularly Aristotle's Politics, chapter 9, 
Definition of Money.' You begin to see the shadow of the 
first Secretary of the Treasury, of the author of the Report 
on Manufactures, of the author of the Report of the National 
Bank, and of the man of whom it was truly said afterward 
by Webster that he struck a blow on the rock of the na- 
tional resources and revenue gushed forth for the people of 
the United States. At seventeen, then, Hamilton was 
reading the greatest work of antiquity on the science and 
art of government among men. 

I like to think of him strolling on the Common yonder, 
at the head of what we now call Bowling Green, with the 
youth of his time, eager and enthusiastic; then writing 
pamphlets in defense of the rebel position, that attracted the 
attention of the whole country in answer to the Westchester 
Farmer, one of the learned men in the Colonies, the boy 
concealing his own identity. In two short years after 
coming from his West Indian home, so completely had he 
entered into the feelings and aspirations and hopes of the 
Colonists, so thoroly had he mastered the problems before 
them, that even before they knew his name or his age, they 
were hailing the writer of those pamphlets as their deliverer 
from the oppression of Great Britain. I submit that in the 
whole history of government there is nothing to be found 
like this. We have seen great and precocious genius in 
literature, as, for example, in Chatterton; we have seen 
great and precocious genius in music, as, for example, in 
Mozart; but where in the affairs of men, where in those large 
matters that have to do with the organization of liberty, 
the establishment of government, and the perpetuation of 
everlasting standards of right among human beings — where 
from the dawn of history hav^e we before seen a youth of 19 
leading the thought of a people and laying the foundations 
of a nation?" 

Then I like to think of his part in the army during the War 
of Independence, of his close association with Washington and 
of his admiration for him, and of Washington's dependence 
upon the younger man. I like to think of his eager and 



exultant defense, by voice and by pen, of every act of the 
new people, and of his part in shaping the slowly-forming 
government that the thirteen colonies were feeling their 
way, tentatively, toward building into a visible and perma- 
nent form, I like to think that at no single step in the pro- 
cess did Hamilton fail to take a most conspicuous part. 
At no time did he fail to strike the heaviest blow. Never 
was he found anywhere but among the leaders, the real 
leaders, of political opinion in the American Colonies. 
Whether it was in New York, in Massachusetts, in Virginia, 
or in South Carolina the American people of that day doffed 
their hats to Alexander Hamilton as the one supreme genius 
in intellectual leadership and in exposition that they had 
among them. 

As soon as the war was over he found his place at the 
bar and in the Congress of the Confederation. He warmly 
defended the treaty with Great Britain. He insisted that 
it must be lived up to even tho unpopular; that even a 
young nation could not aft'ord to be false to its pledged 
word. He insisted that our people never would be free and 
never would be safe until they had formed a real govern- 
ment with real powers, and had made themselves, not a 
loose federation of independent units, but an integral, in- 
dependent, self-respecting, self-supporting, self-defending 
nation. That was Hamilton's task. He had to compete 
with men otherwise minded, to overcome prejudices and to 
answer reasonable as well as unreasonable objections. He 
had to meet all these ; and then he had to combat the selfish 
and the self-seeking as well. He was tireless, this stripling 
only then in the twenties and early thirties; tireless with 
voice and with pen in making men understand what the 
United States might be and what America ought to be. 

Finally, almost by a subterfuge, he got a constitutional 
convention. In those days you could not easily persuade 
the several colonies to come together in conference for any 
purpose, lest they might, in some way, as a result of con- 
ferring, sacrifice a measure of their independence and their 
sturdy separateness. He persuaded some of them, how- 



ever, to convene at Annapolis to settle questions relating 
to the navigation and use of Chesapeake Bay. Having 
brought them into conference he persuaded them to call a 
constitutional convention. He did not quite call it by that 
name — had he done so it might never have been held — but 
he persuaded them to call another conference to devise a 
more adequate plan of government. He went back to 
Albany and got himself elected as one of the three delegates 
from New York; the other two, being convinced opponents 
of the whole undertaking, outvoted him in the convention, 
so long as they remained in it. At the psychological mo- 
ment Alexander Hamilton took the floor in the convention. 
Was he in doubt about the making of a constitution? 
Not in the least. He had a constitution all ready; he pro- 
posed it. For five hours, as Madison tells in his journal, he 
held spell bound this convention of the ablest men ever 
gathered together in one room for a like purpose, while he 
explained the principles on which the nation's government 
should be organized. The major portion of that plan of 
government is contained in the Constitution of the United 
States in this year of grace 19 13. Other plans were pro- 
posed; long debates ensued, but that genius, that patience, 
that persistence, that skill of exposition never failed. His 
two colleagues from New York left the convention in disgust 
when they saw that the Constitution was going to be made; 
but he remained and signed it as the sole representative of 
what is now the Empire State. Had it not been for Alex- 
ander Hamilton the name of the vState of New York would 
not have been included among the members of the Con- 
stitutional Convention who accepted and recommended for 
adoption the great instrument and the form of government 
that were the result of their deliberations. 

Then came the heaviest task of all; how to get this 
Constitution ratified by the people of the several States? 
It was provided, as you know, in the instrument itself that 
it should become operative when ratified by nine States, 
but no one knew better than Alexander Hamilton that nine 
States would not do. He knew that that provision was a 



mere device, and that every State must ratify if the Con- 
stitution was to become effective and the supreme law of the 
land. 

There followed what I venture to think is, perhaps, 
the greatest forensic triumph of modern times. The Con- 
vention of the State of New York met at Poughkeepsie. 
There were sixty-five delegates from the various counties 
of the State. Nineteen of them, including Hamilton and 
the other delegates from New York, Kings and Westchester, 
were committed to the Constitution. The remainder were 
followers and friends of George Clinton, who bitterly op- 
posed it. Chancellor Kent has told us what happened. 
Long after, nearly half a century after, Chancellor Kent 
wrote his recollection of what took place. He went to 
Poughkeepsie and sat in the gallery of the convention and 
listened to every word of the debates for six weeks. He has 
told us what Hamilton said, what Jay and Livingston said, 
what was said in reply, and how obdurate and stubborn and 
insistent was the opposition to the ratification of the 
Constitution. Hamilton sent a runner out to the east so 
that he might report at the earliest moment the news 
whether or not New Hampshire had ratified. He sent a 
runner out to the south to report at the earliest possible 
moment the news from Madison as to whether Virginia had 
ratified. Finally, by sheer force of intellect, by the display 
of political genius of the first and most enduring order, 
Hamilton wore away all opposition and the Poughkeepsie 
Convention ratified the Constitution on behalf of the State 
of New York by a majority of three. That, Mr. Chairman, 
was before the days of bosses; it was a time when men had 
to be won over from one side of a proposition to the other 
by force of argument and by intellect; and Hamilton wore 
down the powerful and determined opposition by no other 
instruments than those. 

The Constitution was made. What was the govern- 
ment? Where were its resources, and what scheme of 
taxation was it to employ? How was it to differentiate its 
scheme of taxation from that which supported the several 



8 

colonies, now States? How was this new national unity 
to develop? How was it to make itself real? Obviously, 
the center point of the fighting line was the Department of 
the Treasury; and to that department Alexander Hamilton 
went at George Washington's call. There he sat for the 
six most fateful years of the history of the government of 
the United States. One great report after another was 
poured in upon the Congress. It consisted of clever and 
intelligent men, but they were almost stupefied by the wealth 
of information, the rush of argument, the appeals that were 
made to them to formulate a system of taxation, to charter 
a bank, to raise revenue, to organize a treasury system and 
to call the latent forces of a nation into action for purposes 
of national support and for national administration. No 
one doubts — no one can — that Hamilton did every atom of 
work in connection with all this. The Congress had hardly 
anything before it of great magnitude but his proposals. 
It had nothing to do but to accept, to amend or to reject 
them; you may read the history of those Congresses for 
yourselves. They accepted in principle, and almost in 
detail, every great fundamental recommendation that he 
made ; and that is how the government of the United States 
was built. There was no use in making a government that 
was a framework of bones and skin alone ; these bones must 
be covered with flesh; these arteries and veins must be 
filled with blood; there must be food to assimilate, power 
to gain nourishment, ability to act. Hamilton saw to it 
that all this was done. Read the history of the first three 
Congresses. Read the communications made to them; 
read their debates, their votes; read the history of Washing- 
ton's administration, and tell me whether Alexander Hamil- 
ton did not make the government of the United States in 
body and in spirit, just as truly as he had planned and 
constructed it in form. 

Hamilton withdrew from the service of the Government 
at thirty-eight. At thirty-eight this great epoch-making 
work was done. At an age when most men, even those of 
talent, of power, of training, are just ready for the active 



and constructive work of life, Alexander Hamilton was 
thru as the builder of the greatest government of any 
people that the world has ever seen. He withdrew to the 
practise of the law. He lived over across the river in Wall 
Street at No. 58, in a little house almost opposite the great 
building which was formerly the Custom House, wellknown 
to all of us. It was in passing that house that no less a 
person than Talleyrand, on his visit to New York said, 
when he saw the light burning in Hamilton's study window 
at midnight : ' I have seen the eighth wonder of the world. 
I have seen a man laboring at midnight for the support of 
his family who has made the fortune of a nation. ' 

Hamilton's career at the bar was without an equal. As 
an advocate and in exposition, particularly in defense of 
fundamental principles of justice and equity and human 
liberty, the testimony is that he was a marvel of lucidity 
and of power. Long afterward — in 1832, I think it was — 
Chancellor Kent wrote a striking letter to Mrs. Hamilton. 
Hamilton had then been dead twenty-eight years and Mrs. 
Hamilton was an old lady. She wrote to Chancellor Kent 
and asked him whether he would not put on record some of 
his reminiscences of her husband; whether he would not 
tell her, what he, Kent, thought about Hamilton's relations 
to the making of the Constitution; what he, Kent, thought 
about his work at Poughkeepsie where Kent had watched 
him, and what he, Kent, thought about his work at the 
American bar. Kent wrote in reply one of the most 
beautiful and charming analytical eulogies that one human 
being could write of another. Remember that Kent was, 
with Marshall, the greatest of American jurists; remember 
that Hamilton had been dead and gone for twenty-eight 
years; remember that the shadow of the great contest as 
to slavery was already projecting itself over the land; 
remember that new men and new issues were in the places 
of prominence, and that there was nothing due to Hamilton 
but the dispassionate, fair and honorable judgment of 
history. Kent rendered this judgment in one of the most 
memorable documents of our American literature. I can- 



lO 

not now recall its striking passages and its phrases, but I 
commend it to every student of American politics. It tells 
us what James Kent, that maker and interpreter of American 
law, thought about Alexander Hamilton as the guide, 
philosopher and friend of the Government, the bench and 
the bar of his day. 

I have wondered sometimes whether Kent must not have 
overheard one of Hamilton's most charming sayings, many 
years before, when they were on circuit together — as I 
remember it, in Orange County in this State — Kent as 
judge, Hamilton as barrister. They found themselves 
spending the night in an uncomfortable and ill-furnished 
tavern in a country town. Hamilton awakened in the 
night, shivering because of the insufficiency of his covering; 
he got up from his bed and with his covering in his arms 
carried it into the room where Kent was sleeping, and quietly 
and softly spread it over him, saying, ' Sleep well, sleep 
warm, little judge; we cannot afford to have harm come to 
you. ' I have often wondered whether Kent in his sleep 
did not hear these affectionate words, and whether he did 
not fifty years afterward reflect, in his judgment to the 
stricken widow, something of the feeling of affection and 
regard which the great barrister, the great constructive 
statesman, felt for him. 

Then came Hamilton's end; that tragic, fateful end, 
to be ascribed, as we look back on it now, to the false sense 
of honor that prevailed a century ago, which made men 
think that it was necessary for them to kill each other in 
order to avenge a fancied or a real insult. In this con- 
nection, too, I recall now another interesting story of Kent. 
Kent had been a friend of Aaron Burr, but the devoted 
admirer of Hamilton. He never saw Burr for years after 
this terrible calamity until one day when Kent was walking 
up Nassau Street, in New York, he saw Burr coming down 
on the other side. The little Chancellor crost the pavement 
and went over to Burr and said, ' Mr. Burr, you are a dam- 
ned scoundrel. Sir, you are a damned scoundrel!' Burr 
looked steadily at him, took off his hat, and replied with 



II 

mock politeness, 'Mr. Chancellor, your judgments are 
always entitled to be received with respect.' 

It is not possible for us — even for those of us who 
remember the taking off of Lincoln, the killing of Garfield 
or the murder of McKinley — to picture the feeling of this 
country — then a mere strip on the seaboard to be sure, 
without telegraphs, without telephones or rapid post — 
when it was learned that Hamilton was dead. It did not 
seem possible to the people of the United States of that day 
that this very symbol of power and vitality, this center of 
the constructive force of the nation, who seemed able by 
his charm and persuasiveness and potency to ride down 
every obstacle, to conquer enemies and to bring the great 
mass of the population to the support of his specific projects 
— it did not seem possible that at 47 Alexander Hamilton 
had past from earth. And yet he had. 

Before venturing to speak to you on this subject, I have 
been reading over again the records of that time, in order 
to get back into the atmosphere of the period, to catch 
something of its feeling, and to refresh my memory as to 
some of the men and events of those years. In doing so I 
came upon the funeral oration delivered two weeks after 
Hamilton's death by the Henry Ward Beecher of that day, 
by Dr. Mason, senior minister of the Collegiate Dutch 
Church in New York, who was the favorite pulpit orator 
of this part of the United States. He had been selected 
to deliver the funeral oration on Hamilton before the So- 
ciety of the Cincinnati at a great meeting called in New 
York. I wrote down a few paragraphs from that oration, 
and I ask the privilege of reading them in order to take 
you back with me into the atmosphere of July, 1804, when 
it was known that Hamilton was really dead. 

After describing Hamilton's career, what was then so 
fresh, so new, so full of suggestion, and after tracing the 
whole history of the making of the Constitution, Dr. Mason 
concluded his oration with these words : 

" The result is in your hands. It is in your national existence. Not such, 
indeed, as Hamilton wished, but such as he could obtain, and as the States 
would ratify, is the Federal Constitution. His ideas of a government which 



12 

should elevate the character, preserve the unity, and perpetuate the liberties 
of America, went beyond the provisions of that instrument. Accustomed to 
view men as they are, and to judge of what they will be, from what they ever 
have been, he distrusted any political order which admits the baneful charity 
of supposing them to be what they ought to be. He knew how averse they 
are from even wholesome restraint; how obsequious to flattery; how easily 
deceived by misrepresentation; how partial, how vehement, how capricious. 
He knew that vanity, the love of distinction, is inseparable from man; that 
if it be not turned into a channel useful to the Government, it will force a 
channel for itself, and if cut off from other egress, will issue in the most cor- 
rupt of all aristocracies — the aristocracy of money. He knew, that an ex- 
tensive territory, a progressive population, an expanding commerce, diversi- 
fied climate, and soil and manners, and interest, must generate faction; must 
interfere with foreign views, and present emergencies requiring, in the general 
organization, much tone and promptitude. A strong government, therefore; 
that is, a government stable and vigorous, adequate to all the forms of national 
exigency, and furnished with the principles of self-preservation, was un- 
doubtedly his preference, and he preferred it because he conscientiously be- 
lieved it to be necessary. A system which he would have entirely approved 
would probably keep in their places those little men who aspire to be great; 
would withdraw much fuel from the passions of the multitude; would diminish 
the materials which the worthless employ for their own aggrandizement; 
would crown peace at home with respectability abroad; but would never 
infringe the liberty of an honest man. From his profound acquaintance with 
mankind, and his devotion to all that good society holds dear, sprang his 
apprehensions for the existing Constitution. Convinced that the natural 
tendency of things is to an encroachment by the States on the Union; that 
their encroachments will be formidable as they augment their wealth and 
population; and, consequently, that the vigor of the general Government will 
be impaired in a very near proportion with the increase of its difficulties; he 
anticipated the day when it should perish in the conflict of local interest and 
of local pride. The divine mercy grant that his prediction may not be verified ! 
"He was bom to be great. Whoever was second, Hamilton must be first. 
To his stupendous and versatile mind no investigation was difficult — no 
subject presented which he did not illuminate. Superiority, in some particu- 
lar, belongs to thousands. Pre-eminence, in whatever he chose to undertake, 
was the prerogative of Hamilton. No fixed criterion could be applied to his 
talents. Often has their display been supposed to have reached the limit of 
human effort, and the judgment stood firm till set aside by himself. When a 
cause of new magnitude required new exertion, he rose, he towered, he soared; 
surpassing himself, as he surpassed others. Then was nature tributary to 
his eloquence! Then was felt his despotism over the heart! Touching, at 
his pleasure, every string of pity or terror, of indignation or grief; he melted, 
he soothed, he roused, he agitated; alternately gentle as the dews, and awful 
as the thunder. Yet, great as he was in the eyes of the world, he was greater 
in the eyes of those with whom he was most conversant. The greatness of 
most men, like objects seen through a mist, diminishes with the distance; but 
Hamilton, like a tower seen afar off under a clear sky, rose in grandeur and 
sublimity with every step of approach. Familiarity with him was the parent 



13 

of veneration. Over these matchless talents Probity threw her brightest 
luster. Frankness, suavity, tenderness, benevolence, breathed thru their 
exercise. And to his family — but he is gone. That noble heart beats no 
more; that eye of fire is dimmed; and sealed are those oracular lips. Ameri- 
cans, the serenest beam of your glory is extinguished in the tomb! " 

That, Mr. Chairman, is the contemporary judgment; 
spoken, to be sure, under stress of great feeHng and deep 
sorrow, the contemporary judgment of one of the greatest 
orators of his day, voicing the opinion of men of intelligence, 
high spirit and good will everywhere as to the man who 
was killed by Burr's bullet on the shelf of the Palisades. 

I said to you a few moments ago that I could tell you 
nothing new about Hamilton. This is all a twice-told tale. 
This is part of the warp and woof of our American history; 
this is part of the very fabric out of which we are made and 
of the institutions under which we live. And yet, Mr. 
Chairman, who would have supposed that after the lapse 
of a hundred short years the work of Alexander Hamilton 
must be done all over again? That, sir, is the condition 
which confronts the American people in these opening 
years of the twentieth century. What Alexander Hamilton 
taught of civil liberty, of freedom and of order; what he 
taught of effective, responsible government, of its purpose, 
its organs, its instruments, has become so familiar, so built 
into our daily life and into the fabric of our business, that we 
have forgotten, many of us, that it is essential to our wel- 
fare and to the perpetuity of our Government. Yet today, 
from one voice and another, meeting a fair measure of ap- 
proval all over the land, come attacks upon these very 
fundamental principles of our Government, until many 
of us cry aloud for the spirit of Hamilton to come back to 
us and lead this great empire of ours still farther forward 
in the fight for the permanent upbuilding of civil liberty! 

When the Constitution of these United States was 
framed, our fathers staked out clearly two great fields of 
activity and conduct. On the one hand, they formulated 
a plan of government. They constituted it of an executive, 
a legislative and a judicial branch, and they ascribed to 
these their several functions. Then they marked out just 



14 

as clearly the field of civil liberty. They forbade the 
Government to invade it, and they erected great courts 
of justice to see to it that it was not invaded. Never before 
in the history of mankind, and never since, has that been 
done. In no ancient state, in no medieval state, in no 
modern state but ours, is civil liberty a part of the funda- 
mental law of the land. The nearest approach to it is in 
the Constitution of the German Empire; that Constitution 
written after the war with France, in 1871, under the guid- 
ance of Bismarck. Neither the Constitution of France nor 
the unwritten Constitution of Great Britain — none of these 
modern constitutions of which you read, not one of them — 
defines and protects the field of civil liberty as our fathers 
did 125 years ago. Today it is proposed to us as an advance, 
as a step forward, that we should unite to throw away the 
only. thing which distinguishes us from the other nations 
of the world; to put civil liberty into the melting-pot; to 
make it subject to any majority, however temporary, 
however fickle, whether at the polls or in the Legislature, 
and to make it possible to strip a man of his property, his 
liberty and freedom; and that, if you please, by any mere 
rush of tumultuous passion ! 

Never has a more preposterous, never has a more 
ignorant, proposal been made by anybody. In absolute 
defiance of history, in utter ignorance of the history of 
Europe, in ignorance even of the history of the United 
States, without any appreciation of what we have been 
doing these 125 years, we are now asked to strip ourselves 
of the one great fundamental protection which the fathers 
won for us, and to which the enlightened peoples of the 
world have been looking for a century and a quarter as the 
greatest evidence of political progress that mankind has 



ever seen 



I submit, Mr. Chairman, that it requires not only a 
large measure of ignorance, but a total lack of the sense of 
humor, to propose such a program in the name of advance. 
This new program may be a wise one, but then put upon 
it the name that belongs to it — reaction! Say frankly that 



15 

we have gone ahead too fast; that we have staked out 
territory that man is still incompetent to occupy; that we 
are not ready for liberty; that we should go back to the 
days of Francis I and Henry IV and Henry VIII, and, 
substituting the many for the one, turn over our civil 
liberty to the tender mercies of a tyrant. That is what is 
seriously proposed to the American people today. 

This is not a party question; it rises far above faction 
or names or personalities, or political parties. I beg you to 
believe that I should not speak of this matter in this pres- 
ence, on an occasion such as this, did I not believe that it 
goes to the very roots of our American life, and that those 
things with which the great names of Hamilton and Jeffer- 
son and Washington and Madison and Marshall and Web- 
ster and Lincoln are associated, are at stake. They are all 
at stake in the issues that are being debated before the 
American people today. 

Vou may, if you choose, solace yourselves with the 
optimistic thought that everything will come out well. 
Hamilton never did. He saw to it that it came out well. 
He addrest himself to the Constitutional Convention lest 
error be made. He later addrest himself to the New York 
Convention at Poughkeepsie lest the Constitution be re- 
jected. He addrest himself to the Congress of the United 
States lest we have no adequate financial system, no na- 
tional income and no properly ordered system of taxation. 
He was never content to let matters drift. He saw to it — 
trusting as he did, and as every American must, in the good 
faith, the honor and the intelligence of the American people 
— he saw to it that the facts were laid before them with 
such clearness, the arguments adduced with such cogency, 
the objections answered with such overwhelming force, 
that they were led to walk in the straight and narrow path 
of national safety. 

The building of this nation has been a long, a solemn 
and a sacred task. It is the work of four generations of 
men who have conceived lofty ideals, and who, without 
regard to party, religious faith or section, whether up in 



i6 

the pine forests of Maine or over across the continent in 
the orange fields of CaUfornia, or down on the plantations 
of the sunny South, have wrought for freedom, for liberty, 
for stability, for justice. The American people have, in a 
singular sense, regarded themselves as the instruments of 
Providence in the working-out of a great government and 
a mighty civilization. Almost alone among the govern- 
ments of the world, they have been in the habit, from the 
beginning, of invoking the Divine blessing upon the delibera- 
tions of their legislative bodies, and they have seen to it 
that religion has been represented on every great occasion 
of national festivity or rejoicing. They have felt that here 
in this Western World, with an endowment by Nature the 
like of which history has never recorded, the opportunity 
has been given to try on a huge scale, opening their arms to 
all who would come, the fateful experiment of self-govern- 
ment. Many men of all types and kinds, soldiers and 
sailors, jurists and teachers, legislators and executives, 
philosophers and popular leaders, have contributed to that 
great end. But out of them all I name six men who stand 
forever in the American Pantheon as supremely important 
among all those who have builded the nation's government. 
I do not speak now of those who have made other and 
important contributions; I have not in mind those who 
have led great parties, who have accomplished important 
acts or have set in motion great and fine and lasting currents 
of thought; but I speak of six men who, one after another, 
have struck the blows that were necessary to the construc- 
tion of our great American ship of state — the nation's 
builders. 

The first is George Washington. Without his calm and 
even temper, without his serene and unruffled mind, which 
was as influential because of what he refrained from doing 
as because of what he did, the existence of this American 
nation is unthinkable. His is, beyond all comparison, 
the great self-sacrificing character in political history. 
Washington, thru his personality, drew the people of 
these colonies together, made them feel loyalty to a single 



17 

person, and thru that person, to the idea which he repre- 
sented; and then he deftly withdrew his personaUty and 
left them to worship the new and beautiful ideal that he 
had given them. 

By his side and with him was Hamilton, the supreme 
constructive genius in political philosophy and in states- 
manship. He showed what to do and how to do it; how 
the executive and the legislature could be adjusted to each 
other; how the nation's business could be carried on; and 
how the various departments of government should be 
organized. He taught the great mass of the American 
people what the fundamental principles were which underlay 
this new and fateful project. 

Next comes John Marshall, who, from his great place 
as Chief Justice of the United States, gave to the new 
Constitution that interpretation — at a time when two 
interpretations were possible — which welded the nation 
together in unity and gave to it supreme power and legal 
control over its several parts. But Marshall's work was 
challenged. Thomas Jefferson petulantly put obstacles 
in his way, and no less a man than Andrew Jackson said : 
■John Marshall has made the decision, now let him execute 
it.' The people of the United States had to be taught that 
when the nation spoke — whether by voice of the President, 
the Congress or the Supreme Court, when a constitutional 
interpretation was made, it was to be obeyed, even if it 
took the whole of the nation's power to compel obedience. 

That great act of public education was preformed by this 
same rugged Andrew Jackson of Tennessee in his great 
proclamation to the nullifiers of South Carolina. When 
the distinguished gentlemen of South Carolina said they 
would not enforce the tariff act, that they did not approve 
of it, that they would not accept it for their State, Andrew 
Jackson — speaking perhaps by the pen of the great jurist, 
Edward Livingston of Louisiana — made a famous procla- 
mation to the nullifiers in which was conveyed the substance 
of his reported personal message to John C. Calhoun, one 
of the greatest of all American statesmen and political 



philosophers. This was that if one drop of blood was shed 
in defiance of the laws of the United States, he, Andrew 
Jackson, would hang the first nullifier he could lay his hands 
on to the first tree he could find. And so the laws of the 
United States were not nullified in South Carolina. The 
decisions of the Supreme Court were undisputed thereafter, 
and this nation took a long step forward toward real 
nationality. 

Then came the eloquent voice of Daniel Webster, who, 
for thirty years at the bar, on the platform and in the Sen- 
ate of the United States, educated public opinion to a point 
where resistance to the secession movement that had to 
come, was both natural and necessary. We need not blink 
the fact that without Daniel Webster the Civil War could 
not have been fought to a successful conclusion. It was 
not possible to rest our national contention in that war 
upon a purely legal basis, even upon legal propositions so 
clear and firm; for they were cold and rational only. Daniel 
Webster had for thirty years made them live. He burned 
into the hearts of the American people the idea of nation- 
ality. Whether you take one great speech at Plymouth, 
another at Boston, another in New York, or the great and 
conclusive reply to Hayne in the Senate, it makes no dif- 
ference; they are all part of one great going to school by 
the people of the United States to Daniel Webster. He 
taught them not alone in terms of constitutional law and 
of legal definitions, but in terms of everyday thought and 
feeling and action that this nation was one. It was he who 
prepared the way for what followed. 

Daniel Webster made it possible for Abraham Lincoln — 
that sad, patient, long-suffering man — to carry this nation 
thru the final crisis of its birth throes; because he had 
put under him and behind him the great body of opinion 
which believed that this nation was one, was to be kept 
one, was to live as one and was to live a free people. 

These six men, Mr. Chairman, are both the symbols 
and the moving forces of the constructive nation-building 
of the American people. They are drawn from all parts- 



^9 

of the United »States, from different classes of society, with 
varying poHtical views, touching the people with different 
interests and at different points. These six men are the 
most prominent in the galaxy of our nation-building heroes. 
Each one of them would be affrighted could he know from 
his place in high heaven that at this late day it is seriously 
proposed in the name of greater justice, of more effective 
advance, to undermine and to break down the very foun- 
dations on which this government and the civilization of 
this people rest. 

And so, Mr. Chairman, as we mark this anniversary of 
Hamilton's birth and pay to him the highest tribute, we can 
give him his most just and well-earned recognition only if 
we remember not alone what he \vas, not alone what he did, 
but what bearing all that has upon the America of today; 
what lessons his career and his teachings have in relation 
to the great problems of politics, of economics and of the 
development of civil liberty that are to be solved in the 
future. There is no safe guide for the future but the ex- 
perience of the past. When we know what has happened 
under certain conditions we may with some assurance pre- 
dict what will happen when those conditions are repeated. 
When we see out of what a morass of medievalism, out of 
what a morass of injustice and ignorance and squalor, the 
people of the United States and their ancestors, have come; 
to what heights they have mounted under their Constitution 
and their laws, their civil institutions, their liberty and 
their freedom, it is to me inconceivable that as these people 
come to know what the issue of the moment really is, they 
will turn their backs on Washington and Hamilton and 
Marshall and Jackson and Webster and Lincoln, and tear 
their governmental structure down just to see what will 
happen. 

NlCHOL.KS MURR.VV BuTLER 
COLU.MBI.V U.N'IVERSITV 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS i 



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